Brigadier Malcolm Cubiss

Brigadier Malcolm Cubiss, who has died aged 83, was awarded one of the first
Immediate Military Crosses of the Korean War.

On the night of November 29 1950, the 1st Battalion the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (1 RNF) was holding a position near Sibyon-ni, North Korea. Cubiss was in command of an isolated platoon on the top of a feature known as “Gibraltar Hill”, which was the key to the battalion’s position.

At 03.30 hours they were attacked by a force more than four times their strength. The fighting was bitter . The total number of enemy casualties will never be known because they took care to remove those who fell, but there were seven dead within a few yards of the platoon HQ.

There were further attacks on the next two nights, which Cubiss’s small force once again beat back, inflicting heavy losses in fierce hand-to-hand fighting. The citation for his MC stated that his resolution and tactical skill had kept his own casualties to two men.

John Malcolm Cubiss was born at Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, on October 12 1929. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School before being commissioned in 1949 as a National Service officer into the West Yorkshire Regiment. After the outbreak of the Korean War he was working for Barclays Bank when he was recalled as a reservist.

In April 1951, 1 RNF took part in the Battle of the Imjin River. Cubiss’s platoon was dug in on a long, low hill overlooking the river. The first indication he had that an attack was imminent was when a group of Fusiliers tumbled through his position shouting over their shoulders: “They are right behind us!” There was no warning by bugle or whistle. The Chinese soldiers pursuing the retreating patrol lobbed their grenades into the slit trenches; Cubiss was twice slightly wounded.

Two months later he was badly injured when a mine that he was arming exploded prematurely. It removed his right arm to the elbow and destroyed his hearing. He feared that he might have to leave the Army , but Field Marshal Lord Slim, Chief of the Imperial Staff and Colonel of the West Yorkshires, intervened and Cubiss was granted a regular commission.

On one occasion, appearing in the officers’ mess without his prosthetic arm, he was asked by his CO whether it was giving him trouble. Cubiss replied that he had been reprimanded for not saluting properly and so, turning round to show the ribbon of his MC, he had detached it and left it with “a flabbergasted, pear-shaped officer”, offering the advice: “Why don’t you have a go with this?”

Thereafter Cubiss adopted a hook.

For several years his medical downgrading restricted him to home postings. After passing the Staff College exam, however, and serving as brigade major, he moved to HQ1 (British) Corps in Germany. In 1967 he moved to Sandhurst as chief instructor and, in 1972, served as GSO1 at the School of Infantry. Despite his disabilities, he was a marksman with all small arms weapons and shot for the School.

He went to Belfast as deputy commander 39 Brigade. His hook, prominently displayed as he went through the streets, was highly polished and as sharp as a razor. He was mentioned in despatches at the end of his tour.

Pomposity and pretentiousness received very short shrift from him. When a general, a stickler for punctuality and held in no great affection, paid an official visit, Cubiss arranged for all the clocks in the camp to be put forward by five minutes. The great man arrived to find Cubiss, a picture of exasperation, tapping his watch.

After a posting as Chief of Staff Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land), in 1977 he returned to Northern Ireland as colonel in charge of logistic support for operations. He was appointed CBE in 1979.

A short tour at Shape (Supreme HQ Allied Powers Europe) followed. As Chief of Crisis Management Staff, he said that his personal inclination, in the event of a crisis, was to “Nuke ’em till they glow.” Fortunately, he had no occasion to make a formal recommendation to this effect.

In 1980 he was promoted brigadier on becoming Deputy Commander Western District. He retired from the Army in 1983 and, until 1993, was regimental secretary of the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire.

Even long-standing friendship provided no insurance against Cubiss’s impish sense of humour. A chum of his, on pulling out the driver during a round of golf, was startled by an explosion which reduced the bottom of the bag to smoking rags. On his return home this friend was greeted by Cubiss – who had booby-trapped the bag with gun-cotton primer – innocently inquiring: “Did you have a good round?”

Malcolm Cubiss married first, in 1959, Ann Learoyd, who predeceased him. He married, secondly, in 2000, Wendy Skaife, who survives him with two sons of his first marriage and a stepson and stepdaughter of his second.